


afloat

by lionsenpai



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsenpai/pseuds/lionsenpai
Summary: What they did to you feels like cold water.





	

**Author's Note:**

> still cross-posting some things from my tumblr. have a heavy-handed character study from when i was just starting to write for ow

What they did to you feels like cold water.

It is an empty sea poured into the hollow cavity of your ribcage, all the meat and offal scooped out, unnecessary. The black water seeps into bone and sinew, but cannot penetrate the sutured skin that holds it in, the keratin growing into talons at the end of each finger. It sloshes in your chest, never placid, never quite right, but it cannot climb into your throat, reach the points of your teeth, all straight and white.

You open your mouth and none of you can escape, the drawl yours and the words Talon’s. The water laps and laps, a dead sea in a constant upheaval, never settling into place.

Even so, your body moves smoothly, gracefully, like an automaton through its track. Reflex guides you where training cannot, and every so often it even feels a bit like a dance. Set, wait, target, fire, _1, 2, 3, 4._ The recoil of your rifle sinks into your shoulder, and you don’t even feel it, already moving onto the next target, more steps to your dance that are unknown to you until the second before you make them.

Amélie danced too, so full of vim and vigor and all that passion, but Talon whittled that away, made it hurt to hold onto, and so you don’t. You dance, and it is cold, limbs moving perfectly, the water inside you churning in stark dissonance like, like -

Total disconnect.

A destruction of the self is tantamount to death, and so you live a half-life, the bits of you Talon left shifting and roiling inside the agent they wanted, lapping at the edges and never finding purchase.

When you’re in swinging by panels of reflective window, you search for the bits of yourself in the black eyes, the skin with permanent, purple bruises, the long hair pulled back in a dancer’s ponytail. What you find is never enough to convince you this body is yours.

Yet even so, you dance, well-rehearsed and well-oiled: set, wait, target, fire, _1, 2, 3, 4._ The recoil sinks back into your shoulder, and you rise to reset.


End file.
